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K-Line
K-Line Electric Trains is a brand name of O gauge and S gauge model railway locomotives, rolling stock, and buildings. Formerly the brand name under which Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based MDK Inc. sold its products, K-Line was then acquired by Sanda Kan, a Chinese toy manufacturer that formerly acted as K-Line's subcontractor. Sanda Kan had licensed the use of the K-Line brand and intellectual property to Lionel. More recently, the Lionel license expired, and Sanda Kan sold the dies to several other companies, with some going to each of Atlas, Bachmann, and RMT. Establishment MDK was founded in 1975 by Maury D. Klein. Like competitor MTH Electric Trains, MDK was a large Lionel dealer, and its mail-order ads appeared in magazines such as Model Railroader in the late 1970s. MDK first used the K-Line name on a line of aftermarket Lionel-compatible tubular track as well as a copy of the A.C. Gilbert American Flyer line of two-rail S-Gauge track which Maury Klein acquired at Gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lionel, LLC
Lionel, LLC is an American designer and importer of toy trains and model railroads that is headquartered in Concord, North Carolina. Its roots lie in the 1969 purchase of the Lionel product line from the Lionel Corporation by cereal conglomerate General Mills and subsequent purchase in 1986 by businessman Richard P. Kughn forming Lionel Trains, Inc. in 1986. The Martin Davis Investment Group (Wellspring) bought Lionel Trains, Inc. in 1995 and renamed it Lionel, LLC. According to its reorganization papers filed as part of its bankruptcy plan on May 21, 2007, about 95% of the company's sales come from O gauge trains. The plan estimated that about US$70 million worth of O gauge trains are sold each year, and that Lionel accounts for about 60% of that market, making it the largest manufacturer of O gauge trains. Lionel Eras Early History MPC/General Mills era (1970–1986) Lionel Corporation sold the tooling for its then-current product line and licensed the Lionel name to Gener ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
O Gauge
O scale (or O gauge) is a scale commonly used for toy trains and rail transport modelling. Introduced by German toy manufacturer Märklin around 1900, by the 1930s three-rail alternating current O gauge was the most common model railroad scale in the United States and remained so until the early 1960s. In Europe, its popularity declined before World War II due to the introduction of smaller scales. O gauge had its heyday when model railroads were considered toys, with more emphasis placed on cost, durability, and the ability to be easily handled and operated by pre-adult hands. Detail and realism were secondary concerns, at best. It still remains a popular choice for those hobbyists who enjoy running trains more than they enjoy other aspects of modeling, but developments in recent years have addressed the concerns of scale model railroaders making O scale popular among fine-scale modellers who value the detail that can be achieved. The size of O is larger than OO/HO layouts, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Marx And Company
Louis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturer in business from 1919 to 1980. They made many types of toys including tin toys, toy soldiers, toy guns, action figures, dolls, toy cars and model trains. Some of their notable toys are Rock'em Sock'em Robots, Big Wheel tricycles, Disney branded dollhouses and playsets based on TV shows like ''Gunsmoke''. Its products were often imprinted with the slogan "One of the many Marx toys, have you all of them?" Logo and offerings The Marx logo was the letters "MAR" in a circle with a large X through it, resembling a railroad crossing sign. As the X sometimes goes unseen, Marx toys were, and are still today, often misidentified as "Mar" toys. Reputedly, because of this name confusion, the Italian diecast toy company Martoys, after two years of production, changed its name to Bburago in 1976. Although the Marx name is now largely forgotten except by toy collectors, several of the products that the company developed remain strong ico ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Flyer
American Flyer is a brand of toy train and model railroad manufactured in the United States. The Chicago era, 1907–1938 Although best remembered for the S gauge trains of the 1950s that it made as a division of the A. C. Gilbert Company, American Flyer was initially an independent company whose origins date back nearly a half century earlier. Chicago, Illinois-based toymaker William Frederick Hafner developed a clockwork motor for toy cars in 1901 while working for a company called Toy Auto Company. According to the recollections of William Hafner's son, John, he had developed a clockwork train running on O gauge track by 1905. Hafner's friend, William Ogden Coleman, gained control of the Edmonds-Metzel Hardware Company, a struggling hardware manufacturer in Chicago, in 1906 or 1907. Hafner and Coleman began producing toy trains using Edmonds-Metzel's excess manufacturing capability after Hafner was able to secure $15,000 worth of orders. By 1907, two American retaile ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trainmaster Command Control
Trainmaster Command (TMCC) is Lionel's electronic control system for O scale 3-rail model trains and toy trains that mainly ran from 1994 to 2006. Conceptually it is similar to Digital Command Control (DCC), the industry's open standard used by HO scale and other 2-rail DC trains. It has one advantage over DCC, in that TMCC-equipped locomotives can run simultaneously with non-TMCC locomotives and Lionel Legacy engines as well as LionChief and LionChief Plus equipped locomotives. The latter require a dedicated remote controller. MTH Corporation's DCS controller can be configured to control TMCC locomotives, and all four systems (TMCC, Legacy, LionChief/LionChief+ and DCS) can be operated on the same track simultaneously. Each simply requires a constant track voltage (18 volts). TMCC/Legacy "broadcasts" its signal to the antenna on the locomotives which listen for signals that first identify the particular locomotive by number and then it issues given commands as to speed, directio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S Gauge
S scale (or S gauge) is a model railroad scale modeled at 1:64 scale, S scale track gauge (space between the rails) is 22,48 (22,5) mm, 0.885 in. S gauge trains are manufactured in both DC and AC powered varieties. S gauge is not to be confused with '' toy train standard gauge'', a large-scale standard for toy trains in the early part of the 20th century. History S scale is one of the oldest model railroading scales. The earliest known 1:64 scale train was constructed from card stock in 1896. The first working models appeared in England in the early 20th century. Modeling in S scale increased in the 1930s and 1940s when CD Models marketed 3/16" model trains. American Flyer was a manufacturer of standard gauge and O gauge "tinplate" trains, based in Chicago, Illinois. It never produced S scale trains as an independent company. Chicago Flyer was purchased by A.C. Gilbert Co. in the late 1930s. Gilbert began manufacturing S scale trains around 1939 that ran on three rail "O" gauge tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Model Railway
Railway modelling (UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland) or model railroading (US and Canada) is a hobby in which rail transport systems are modelled at a reduced scale. The scale models include locomotives, rolling stock, streetcars, tracks, signalling, cranes, and landscapes including: countryside, roads, bridges, buildings, vehicles, harbors, urban landscape, model figures, lights, and features such as rivers, hills, tunnels, and canyons. The earliest model railways were the 'carpet railways' in the 1840s. The first documented model railway was the Railway of the Prince Imperial (French: Chemin de fer du Prince impérial) built in 1859 by emperor Napoleon III for his then 3-year-old son, also Napoleon, in the grounds of the Château de Saint-Cloud in Paris. It was powered by clockwork and ran in a figure-of-eight. Electric trains appeared around the start of the 20th century, but these were crude likenesses. Model trains today are more realistic, in addition to bein ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange, Durham and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-largest municipality in the state. Chapel Hill, Durham, and the state capital, Raleigh, make up the corners of the Research Triangle (officially the Raleigh–Durham–Cary combined statistical area), with a total population of 1,998,808. The town was founded in 1793 and is centered on Franklin Street, covering . It contains several districts and buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care are a major part of the economy and town influence. Local artists have created many murals. History The area was the home place of early settler William Barbee of Middlesex County, Virginia, whose 1753 grant of 585 acres from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville was the first of two land grants in what is now the Chapel Hill-Durham area. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kader Group
Kader Industrial Company Limited was founded in Hong Kong in 1948 by Ting Hsiung Chao. It was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1985 and presently trades under the name of "Kader Holdings Company Limited". The company today is one of the world's largest manufacturers of toy and hobby railways, and also has wider manufacturing interests as well as substantial investments in property. The vision of Mr. Ting Hsiung Chao is shared by the Ting family, which continues to lead the Kader Group. Kader's initial focus product was to manufacture plastic flashlights, which at the time were a novelty. Present day Today the companies main facilities are located in Dongguan, PRC. Manufacturing operations are divided into two categories Original Design Manufacturer (the contract manufacturing of goods for the brand/design owner); and manufacturing of precision model railroads designed and marketed by Kader group companies. ODM customers have included toys for Disney, Hasbro and Mattel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MTH Electric Trains
MTH Electric Trains is an American toy train and model railroad designer, importer, and manufacturer. A privately held company based in Columbia, Maryland, MTH was formerly known as Mike's Train House. Early career MTH's founder, Mike Wolf, started assembling and selling trains at the age of 12 in 1973 for Williams Electric Trains, which had begun producing reproductions of vintage trains manufactured by Lionel Corporation, in the early 1970s. By 1980, Wolf was operating a mail order business selling Williams trains and parts out of his bedroom in his parents' home. When Williams decided to end its line of Lionel Standard gauge and O gauge reproductions, Wolf bought the tooling and continued building the replicas. Although many published reports have stated that Williams had acquired original Lionel tooling, both Wolf and Jerry Williams deny this claim. From 1983 to 1987, MTH marketed the reproduction trains on its own. In 1987, Lionel approached Samhongsa, MTH's subcontractor in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Model Railroader
''Model Railroader'' (''MR'') is an American magazine about the hobby of model railroading. Founded in 1934 by Al C. Kalmbach, it is published monthly by Kalmbach Media of Waukesha, Wisconsin. Commonly found on newsstands and in libraries, it promotes itself as the oldest magazine of its type in the United States, although it is the long-standing competitor to ''Railroad Model Craftsman,'' which - originally named ''The Model Craftsman'' - predates MR by one year. ''MR'' is considered to be a general-interest hobby magazine, appealing to a wide range of hobbyists, rather than specializing in a particular scale, or facet of the hobby (such as prototype operations or scratch building and kitbashing). ''Model Railroader'' covers a variety of scales and modeling techniques for engines, rolling stock, right-of-way, structures, and scenery. It reviews products including ready-to-run models as well as kits, tools and supplies. The magazine presents blueprints and photographs of prototyp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasticville
Plasticville is a brand of plastic toy train building sold in the United States, made by formerly Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Bachmann Industries since 1947 (although they were first advertised in 1946). In 1984, Plasticville as well as the entire line was taken over by Kader Industries of Dongguan, China and made entirely in China. Plasticville buildings are a simple design, made of walls that snap together, permitting them to be assembled without glue and easily disassembled again for storage. Out of the box, Plasticville buildings are usually two-tone, with building walls of one color and the doors, windows and roof molded out of a different colored plastic. With few exceptions, Plasticville buildings are styled after 1950s suburban buildings, and the product line has not changed since the late 1950s. Most Plasticville buildings are 1:64 scale with 1:48 scale doors, a design compromise that allows them to be used with O gauge, O27 gauge, or S gauge train layouts without lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
